Hotness
All right so it's not hot necessarily. But let the record show that I, along with many others I walked alongside today, wore shorts and a t-shirt. Though I did allow the fact that it's January to keep me in socks and Nikes. I'm not that out of control.
Global warming or El Nino, one can never be sure. The experts differ on the answer. (Correction: They DON'T differ. Thanks for the meteorology lesson, C.) In trying to find a good one for myself, I figured I'd watch the Weather Channel. When extreme temps occur, I tend to become obsessed with monitoring the weather. I have three weather widgets on my Tiger desktop, though one is for Australia. But back to the Weather Channel. I was watching this woman today whose name I cannot remember, and she was discussing the high temps for today. She said something to the effect of the following: "Tomorrow's temperatures will be much lower than today's, though they will still be well above normal. If that makes sense." And she chuckled a bit, as though she had just made it through an excruciating point that she felt was going to give her some difficulty and, therefore, would be difficult for her viewers to understand.
If that makes sense? What? It makes perfectly ridiculous sense, so much so that she didn't have to ask. This is an example of the dumbing down of society. The apparent need for media -- yes, weather people count -- to over explain and make plain the most simple of ideas. To put things in sound bite size pieces, so the people can get back to their respective social networks and hope to god someone commented on their page. I don't watch much of the news media, preferring to get it from various online sources. Even then I'm not sure how much exactly is bullshit. But at least the people who write what I read don't think I'm stupid. Not such a big point, but a point nevertheless.
After I turned her off, I put my aforementioned shorts and t-shirt on and began traipsing around the immediate blocks around my Park Slope apartment. This neighborhood is becoming more and more foreign to me. The staring eyes I catch have become a little more inquisitive rather than aggressive, though inquisition based on ignorance is a bit too passive aggressive for my liking. I can usually shame them into putting their eyes back on the double strollers containing their twins. It's amusing most times. Or maybe it was just the fact that we were all seeing skin in January. Who can know? But I took care of some stuff, most important of which was checking with one of the three nearby liquor stores to see if it carried mint Bailey's. How ingenious. It didn't, so I settled on the good ol' original. I also took some passport photos. Next is the passport application, which I will try to take care of soon so I don't stress about getting it in time for my June trip to Oz. Fuck, I can't wait.
A friend reminded me tonight about that essay I wrote last year. Still no word, so an e-mail from me is due. Mr. editor of gender book, what's up with this shit? Either publish the damn book already or give me my essay back so I can make it better and shop it elsewhere. Because that's what I need. A distraction from my book. Page 103 ain't a bad place to be, though.
